High Tech Product Planning

There are many ways to skin a cat, so the saying goes. Planning high technology software and hardware products seems to fit in the same category.

While there are some models that you tend to see over and over again, there are a lot of ways that planning of products occurs in the technology industry.

Developer-driven Product Planning

One typical way is what I call “developer-driven”. That’s when an engineer, software programmer, or inventor comes up with a new way to apply an existing technology in a novel way to a different, unsolved problem. Or in some cases, the developer is a true visionary, and actually invents a new breakthrough technology, that blows away the existing way of doing things.

While this developer-driven model is very common, and when it works it can lead to blockbuster successes, this approach is rife with problems—I have repeatedly been brought in to clean up the results of this approach in my consulting practice. The reason for this is that companies using this approach usually have a technology or product-centric view of the world. And what’s missing in the view?

Customers!

Now I don’t want to insult all the technologists out there who have taken the lead in developing products. Of course, technology professional understand the need for customers, and the importance of getting their feedback in the product development process. Some have a natural knack for product planning, and are highly effective. Yet the reality is that product developers aren’t trained to, nor do they generally derive any pleasure from—trying to extract product preferences, unsolved problems, and workflow issues from potential customers. Often customers don’t really know what they want, or have some other agenda which can lead a product planner in the wrong direction—unless the planner is experienced and savvy in uncovering the desired information. Let’s face it, developers are trained to design hardware and write software code. Many do pick up product planning skills—but in my experience, it’s far from the majority.

The end result of a developer-driven product is often one that is launched, gets a few customers, but then stalls long before gaining traction and critical mass in the marketplace. Precious cash has been burned through, and the typical lament is “it’s a great product, if we could only find someone to sell it”. What is frequently believed to be a customer-facing sales and marketing issue, is quite often a product that doesn’t meet customer needs—as a result of flaws in the product planning process.

Customer-centric Product Planning

Another common way that I’ve seen products planned is what I call the customer-centric approach. This method is characterized by using a few “model customers”, with a fanatical devotion to using their input to develop the product. Often you will see this in a company that has previously failed using the developer-centric model discussed above. Sometimes, it’s the same technologists on their second try. Now, you may be thinking, this is the way you do it! But while this approach is definitely an improvement in some ways over a purely technological approach—it too has some limitations.

The customer centric model works well if you are developing for a very limited, niche market—or at least one that is quite homogenous. The problems occur in two areas. First, if your target market is of a heterogeneous nature, it is easy to miss that part of the market that isn’t represented among your select few model customers. Secondly, this approach can sometimes stifle innovation. In high technology, customer input is very important—but customers shouldn’t be doing your product planning for you. Each has their own quirky agendas, unique to their individual companies. In addition, customers often can’t see far enough past their current problems and needs—to imagine how to apply technology to make a radical improvement in their workflow, 2-3 years down the line. So if you only build what they tell you to build, you will often end up with a mostly mundane product, and also one that contains a few features that the greater market will scratch their head over why they were included. Worst of all, the product may be nearly obsolete by the time it hits the streets, because you haven’t looked far enough ahead of the market, and built-in what’s possible and desired for the future. These products get stuck in the present of when they were planned—which in the tech world, is the distant past by the time they are introduced.

Market-centric Product Planning

Finally, let’s talk about the way product OUGHT to be built. I call this approach a market-centric model, although it includes elements of both the customer and technology-driven approaches.

The most basic requirement for success in this approach is to have a skilled, balanced product planning team. The core of this team consists of an experienced Product Manager with a marketing background, and an experience Engineering Manager or Technical Project Leader. I call this the “2-headed monster”.

Having two leaders to a project sounds like a prescription for design-by-committee, which usually satisfies no one. And there are definitely dangers to this approach. The most problematic (and frequently encountered) issue is when the Product Manager and Engineering Lead clash, or just don’t like each other. Then you have a real problem—and one that must be dealt with quickly. But that’s a topic for another article. The important thing here is that to make a truly GREAT high tech product, both the Product Manager and Technical Lead possess key expertise that needs to be brought to the table.

The Product Manager is the market expert, and customer proxy when necessary. He is the one who is trained, experienced and skilled at uncovering the true needs and latent desires from potential customers. He also has a market perspective, so he will ensure that all important segments of the market will be canvassed to ensure that the resulting offering is MARKET-driven—not shaped by love of a cool technology or requests from a few key individual customers.

The Technical Lead brings a couple of critical skills to the table. He keeps the discussion centered on what’s POSSIBLE, ensuring that you don’t plan a product that can’t meet the required timing and budgetary constraints—or worse yet, can’t be built at all! In addition, he or she can “see ahead” and inject the use of new technology to solve a problem, in a way that those less technical might not be able to envision.

I won’t pretend that this approach to planning products is easy to implement. In truth, it’s hard to pull off. The key ingredients to success for this model are an honest, open process and culture, where everyone is motivated by the success of the product and ultimately, the company. In companies with a high degree of politics, or rivalries between departments, the process tends to fall apart quickly, to no ones benefit or satisfaction. Mutual respect is critical. Anyone should be allowed an opinion on any aspect of the product.

An engineer can express an opinion on the customer base, or marketing approach. A marketer can have an opinion on what technological approach is most appropriate. This cross-fertilization of ideas is very valuable, and can lead to innovative approaches that just aren’t derived from orthodoxy. But at the end of the day, after all the discussion has taken place, there must be mutual respect and trust in the competency of each functional area. Marketing people must be trusted on marketing matters; developers must be trusted on engineering matters. If that trust isn’t there or is lost during the process, a successful product is unlikely.

Best for Success

When done right, the Market-centric approach to product planning is optimal. It usually leads to solid singles and doubles, with the occasional home run. It reduces your risk of an outright flop, while increasing somewhat the normally long odds of creating a blockbuster, market-leading product. Once a company has evolved their product planning process in this manner, it’s poised to introduce a succession of market winners.

That’s my take on planning great high tech products. What’s yours? Post a comment or drop me an email message.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com

Free Search Engine Optimization tools

As I run across tools and websites that I find particularly useful for software and high tech companies, I like to pass them along. One set of tools that I use quite frequently are the free search engine marketing tools by marketleap:

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

There are three great tools available on this site.

1) A link popularity check: Links to your site are one of the most important aspects in raising the profile of your website with the search engines, thus increasing your chance of appearing high in the search engine results. This is terribly important, and will have a big effect on the level of traffic to your site. Using this tool, you can check how many links to your site are out there--as well as your competitors. You can even look at the details, and see where your competitors are getting links--then go there to get a link for your own site!

2) Search Engine Saturation: Allows you to view which of your website's pages are being indexed by the search engines. For those pages not listed, you will know you need to submit them to each search engine where they aren't listed--increasing your site's overall visibility.

3) Keyword Verification: Using this tool, you can specify target keyword or phrases. The tool will return to you where your site places on 7 important search engines. It will tell you where you're ranked on the first 3 pages, or whether your site doesn't show up on the first three pages, for someone doing a search on that keyword/phrase in a specific search engine. It's a great way to figure out if you're achieving your objectives for organic search engines. If not, you then know where you have work to do.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical activity for any high tech company in today's marketplace. These tools, and similar ones on other sites, can really help you manage and enhance your website's position in your market, and pull relevant traffic to your site.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com

CRM Blog

For you marketers and CEOs out there, I wanted to share a great resource to educate and keep you up to speed about this important topic. Jim Berkowitz is a long-time CRM expert, and his CRM Mastery E-Journal is just packed with information on the topic. This blog does a great job of tracking industry events within the CRM space, in addition to Jim's enlightening commentary on customer management. In my experience, high tech companies (particularly early stage) spend shockingly little time "managing the customer experience". I find that for the most part, high tech companies aren't even doing a good job of gathering and organizing basic data on their costomers--let alone using the data to its full potential. Maybe it's the focus on gathering new customers, since technology changes so quickly. Anyway, I recommend to take a look at Jim's E-Journal--let me know what you think.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
www.pjmconsult.com

PR

Among the potential ingredients for the marketing mix of a high tech company, Press Relations is high on my list.

There’s a good reason for it. It is often the most cost effective tactic you can use to generate leads, build the image of the company, and create credibility that helps you close more sales. Best of all, it’s possible to do it on a shoestring budget, if you’re a capital-challenged startup company.

Not For Every Situation

But of course, an active PR campaign isn’t appropriate for every company, at every point in time. It’s very important to make sure that the company has its “house in order” prior to starting a PR campaign. This cautionary note fits into the category of you “only get one chance to make a first impression.” So let’s start by outlining when it’s NOT a good time to start a PR campaign:

1) The Product isn’t finished
2) The Product is buggy
3) No good public spokesman in the company, or one hasn’t been decided on yet
4) No website
5) No marketing literature
6) No users yet (not even beta users)

The basic message here is that PR shouldn’t be started until the company and product are ready. Once you go out for PR, there’s no looking back. You can’t undo it. Maybe you’ve heard the old saying “There’s no such thing as bad PR”. Don’t believe it—it’s a lie! The only kind of PR that will help boost your business is good PR. Bad PR, and even so-so coverage, is to be avoided.

It's the News--Not the Product

In addition, it’s not really possible to do a “small PR campaign”. You can’t test PR like many other marketing programs. It isn’t advisable to go out to a couple of publications with a press release to “test the water”, and see if you get some positive coverage. The problem is that once you do that, your important announcement is no longer “news” to other publications that may have provided coverage. You see, the “product” that publications are interesting in getting from you is THE NEWS ITSELF. Once it’s published in another publication, it’s no longer newsworthy to others. Press Releases are as fragile an asset to your company, as a seat on a particular flight is to an airline. They aren’t static assets, but time-sensitive opportunities to promote your company.

So when you decide to go out with news, you need to go out big. Go out as big as you can afford to, anyway. News needs to be timed to hit all relevant publications at the same time. This is a bit challenging, since you may have relevant publications that are weeklies, monthlies and even websites where the news might posted near real-time. The technique you use to ensure it hits all at the same time is to send your release to the long lead-time pubs first, but “embargo” the release until the general release date. If you are dealing with legitimate journals, they will respect the embargo and won’t publish the news until your official release date.

When PR Makes Sense

So when should you use PR as part of your marketing mix?

1) When announcing the formation of a new company
2) New Product Announcement, assuming the product is “fully cooked”
3) Major new customer acquisitions (assuming it doesn’t need to be secret for some reason)
4) Senior Employees joining the company (new CEO, VP Marketing, etc)
5) New Partnership or Alliance

These are the major reasons that you would put out a press release for marketing reasons, although I’m sure you can think of more. Public companies will often have a greater flow of releases, because they are dealing with a dual purpose of marketing and investor relations. This can often be problematic, but that’s a subject for another day.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

Other questions relate to the mechanics of producing and placing news with the media. Should you hire a PR firm? Should your marketing department handle it internally? Should you hire a dedicate resource to handle the PR function?

There are lots of ways to handle PR and still do it successfully. One size doesn’t fit all—it really depends upon the situation.

The first aspect to look at is your level of resources. PR is one of my preferred marketing activities, so I recommend that you don’t skimp in this area. But there are still situations where the money just isn’t available, for whatever reason. An outside PR firm can always be helpful, particularly if you’ve never been involved in a PR campaign before. But if you’re in a thinly funded startup company, don’t be deterred. To be successful in PR, it’s far more important to have REAL NEWS than it is to have a lot of money. (Of course, money doesn’t hurt!) So if you just can’t afford an outside or experienced PR assistance—do it yourself.

The second thing to consider, from a campaign implementation perspective, is “how big is your news”. If it’s solid, worthy of publication, but not earth shattering—maybe you can handle it internally. At most, maybe you need someone to help with the writing of the release itself, but the potential ink isn’t big enough to spend a lot of dollars attempting to place it. If on the other hand the news is big stuff (with a corresponding large potential payoff), it’s really a good idea to hire an outside firm or an experienced inside resource, to maximize the potential.

Next, how big is your market? If you are in a large, horizontal market, with a large number of bigger publications—that points to the need for a more professional effort. Contacts with the editors are critical in this instance, and an experienced PR professional can be worth their cost many times over. If on the other hand your market is a small vertical niche, a PR professional may not be money well spent, particularly if you have a limited marketing budget. In this case you should be able to build and maintain good relationships with the limited number of editors and writers, who are working for the fewer trade journals covering your industry.

Another question, will the PR opportunity be ongoing? If you’re going to put out 2 press releases a year, how you go about staffing the function is very different, than if there are going to be 2 blockbuster releases each month. So the stage of growth of your company should also help guide your tactical PR implementation.

Lastly, what’s your business culture and style? Do you like to get the best outside experts and use them when you need them, or do you prefer to hire people with expertise as permanent members of your staff? Conversely, do you enjoy learning the specifics of the task personally so you can apply the knowledge yourself? If you choose to learn yourself, make sure you get someone with PR experience to guide you, and serve as a sounding board.

PR is for Almost Everyone

Conducting extremely successful PR campaigns involves many fine points and vagaries, which can’t be addressed in a short article such as this. But I believe anyone should be able a good solid job, if they take the time, and put forth the effort. It’s not a mystery, and for most technology companies PR should play a very prominent role in there promotional strategy.

I’d love to hear about your own PR experiences.

Phil Morettini
PJM Consulting
http://www.pjmconsult.com/